Thursday, May 24, 2012

after a quick weekend at the beach it was off to nyc to see Casi and Sus graduate with their masters from Columbia with lots of family around.

The first night in town we headed over to il bambino for many delicious crostini and the best flourless chocolate cake of my life. I'm not kidding. I've had my fair share of flourless chocolate cake and this is by far the most spectacular. If ever around astoria, you must try it.

The next day we headed over to a couple museums, including of course, the NHM, because I love the dinosaurs.

After graduation there was another great lunch at gobo. Again, many small dishes, a favorite style of my family. There was this avocado tartar with a lime chili sauce that we devoured:

And finally, graduation dinner with all the fambam was at Alta. Although there were many delicious meals throughout the trip, there is no question, this was the best. Because there were so many of us we were able to get almost everything on the menu. My favorites: fried goat cheese with lavender honey, crispy brussel sprouts with apple, and the shrimp & chorizo skewers. These mini creme brulees weren't too shabby either:

so much good food. how will i ever recover?

I forgot to mention the basics that were also consumed of bagels, scallion pancakes, and italian food.

Yup. It was all as awesome. My crab cakes were the best. We voted, so it's not just me saying that.

Oh, but of course, we had to get dessert, you know make sure we tried everything.

Red velvet cake and chocolate mousse:

I don't know if you can tell but that mousse bowl was about a quart and a half in size, and was probably the best mousse i've ever consumed. We barely touched the cake, I had one bite, leftovers were taken.

On a free afternoon Laney and I went to the Renwick where, you know, they house American crafts. It was great, and I decided that after grad school I will just move in and be the resident crafter.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

I've always loved getting mail. From people I care about at least. Most mail these days is junk or bills, another form of junk. So when I get a postcard from ashley, or a letter from a friend, it makes me smile.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

the party variety of shower season has begun. And we kicked it off with a library baby shower for Lauren. Jade and Maggie did an amazing job putting the day together.

To start, it was a library shower, so I got to go through all of my childhood favorites to pick out a couple for the future reader. Though the ones below were some of my absolute favorites, I ended up going with the all time great, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Love You Forever. Such winners!

As for the shower itself, Maggie made all of these garlands from an old encyclopedia and colorful paper to make pendants and mini books, that now resides in the baby's room!

Not to mention this library card station where we wrote messages to the future literary genius.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Ashbash and I are quite behind on our crafting, to no one's surprise I'm sure. But we made some progress last week after classes finished. We started on some of the long list of bows we want to craft by addressing some simple hair pins and lapel pins.

They are simple enough to make: take a strip of fabric and loop it around to form closed sides, bring the end of the strip back to the middle, and then take the tail and wrap it around the middle and tie it through itself. We slide the pins in between the back flap. You can basically make these by tying a bow any way you like, we made a few types but these big ones were our favorites: